Reflection on the Resurrection

By Rev’d. Allison Dean

 

(Listen to this reflection here) ||| (Read all the Lenten blogs here)

 

THE LORD IS RISEN INDEED!

They tried to stone him. They accused him of being an agent of the devil. They arrested him. They beat him. They crucified him. They thought they’d gotten rid of him. But as the hymn says, “They buried my body and they thought I’d gone; but I am the Dance, and I still go on. They cut me down and I leapt up high; I am the life that’ll never, never die”.

THE LORD IS RISEN INDEED!

Not a spiritual resurrection, but a bodily resurrection. The same body that was nailed to cross; the same body that was pierced in the side. That body had life restored to it just as the dry bones in the valley had life restored to them by the power of God.

This is the heart, the centre, the ground, of the Christian faith.

Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 15, “… if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of God that he raised Christ… If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have died in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” (vv. 14-15a, 17-19).

There is no Christian faith without the death and resurrection of Jesus. There is no Church apart from the death and resurrection of Jesus. The great mystery of our faith is that Christ has died, that Christ is risen, and that Christ will come again.

To be a Christian is to believe that the Lord is risen indeed. Risen for us and our salvation; risen that we might be forgiven of our sins; risen that we might come to know God for ourselves, without an intermediary; risen so that all who belong to him will also rise again; risen so that all that is wrong in creation will be put to right once more.

I know that the resurrection doesn’t make sense according to our human way of thinking. But that’s why we say we have faith. Faith is not necessary when you can see, touch, taste, smell, hear something. That’s why Thomas wanted to put his hand in Jesus’ side, because he didn’t have faith, didn’t believe what the other disciples were telling him.

We don’t get to put our hands in the nail marks; we don’t get to put our hands in his side; we don’t get to walk a familiar rode with Jesus or sit and eat with Jesus. But we can have faith. Jesus said, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe” (John 20:29). That’s us, we who 2,000 years later continue to have faith, continue to believe.

Charles Spurgeon wrote, “Though the “things” are only “hoped for” and “not seen” at present, the eye of faith can see them, and the hand of faith can grasp them. We see by faith what cannot be seen by our eyes; we grasp by faith what cannot be grasped with our hands.”

Spurgeon understood the words of the writer to the Hebrews, that “faith gives assurance to your hopes and convinces us of realities we do not see” (11:1 REB).

Faith allows us to believe in something that we would otherwise say is impossible. Faith allows us to say that “THE LORD IS RISEN INDEED!”

Faith, then, is indispensable to us as Christians. That is why we must doggedly cling to faith, even when all about us is dark and uncertain. When our faith is low, when we cannot feel God near, when we find it hard to pray, that is when we need to seek the Lord with more fervor. The Scriptures tell us to seek and we shall find, to knock and the door will be opened. The Scripture also tells us that God rewards those who seek him. The reward of seeking God is an increase of faith. When we earnestly seek God, whether in prayer, in worship, in fellowship, in meditation, in study of his Holy Word, we reinforce or shore up our faith.

It is our faith in the God who raised Jesus Christ from the dead that gives us confidence and hope, comfort and assurance, in the present. It is because he lives we can face tomorrow. It is because we have faith, it is because we know who holds the future, that all fear is gone.

It is in the darkest of nights that the light shines brightest. It is when things seem to be at their worst that God does his greatest miracles. The disciples probably felt that all was lost. All their hopes for the establishment of God’s kingdom had died with Jesus on the cross. When Jesus was laid in the tomb they did not know what was coming. But as we journeyed to the cross this Holy Week, we knew.

We knew that the grave could not hold him. We knew that on the third day he would rise again. We knew that even death itself could not bind God’s anointed one.

And now today we rejoice, because “THE LORD IS RISEN INDEED!”